The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think that it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills, and it’s very brightly coloured, and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question - is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us. They say ‘Hey! Don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride.’ And we…kill those people. Ha ha ha. ‘Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride. SHUT HIM UP! Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and family. This just has to be real.’ It’s just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn’t matter because: it’s just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings, and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourselves off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here’s what you can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defence each year, and instead spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, for ever, in peace.
— Bill Hicks (I just finished American: The Bill Hicks Story and I love this man)
I was going to Catholic school and questioning God, but I believed in Led Zeppelin. I wasn’t really buying into this Christianity thing, but I had faith in Led Zeppelin as a spiritual entity. They showed me that human beings could channel this music somehow and that it was coming from somewhere. It wasn’t coming from a songbook. It wasn’t coming from a producer. It wasn’t coming from an instructor. It was coming from four musicians taking music to places it hadn’t been before — it’s like it was coming from somewhere else.
Finished reading Y: The Last Man this past weekend. I read a lot of debate over the ending, but I really liked it. It kind of reminded me of the Battlestar Galactica finale, which I also liked. Anyway, highly recommended (and you can usually find the books at Half Priced Books for like $4 each).
Rage. This is not a laughing matter.
Some time later, Kurt reached out to me. I missed the call, but my wife took the message: “Kurt Cobain wants to go into the studio with you.” See, I’m 113 years old now; I was about 72 in the Nineties, so I was going to bed at, like, 10 p.m., and he was just getting going around 11. I did call him back a couple of times. The number was from the Four Seasons in L.A., and I would get these responses like, “Mr. Cobain has not left the room for three days” or “Mr. Cobain is under the bed.
The Carnivale pitch document. This has a bunch of backstory to the show. Still in my opinion one of the best shows HBO has ever put out.
The Milky Way as seen from The Himalaya. Stunning. I must go to Nepal soon!
Hydrogen is an odorless colorless gas which, given enough time, turns into people.
— Edward R. Harrison, Cosmology: The Science of the Universe
Little Wing” is painfully short and painfully beautiful. It’s like your grandfather coming back from the dead and hanging out with you for a couple of minutes and then going away. It’s perfect, then it’s gone.
David Simon describes The Wire as a show about “the death of the American empire.” When you realize that the show is about the way that the American Dream has ceased (or perhaps evolved), and the way that the country is unable to solve even simple social problems, it’s difficult to argue with him.
